After ten years former partners sit down together once more as Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) explains to Hart (Woody Harrelson) what he’s been doing the past two years since returning to Louisiana. Although it takes a little convincing, showing Marty what he found in Tuttle’s (Jay O. Sanders) safe years ago, and appealing to his sense of justice and hatred of any crime perpetrated on children, eventually gets Cohle his partner back as the two begin to sift through years of missing children cases finding those tied to the ministry’s private schools and the mysterious Yellow King.

While continuing to interview Hart (Woody Harrelson), and bring in his wife (Michelle Monaghan) for a separate interview, Detectives Gilbough (Michael Potts) and Papania (Tory Kittles) turn their attention specifically to 2002 and the series of events that led to Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) leaving the force. In flashbacks we see Hart’s temporary state as a sober and loyal husband is broken when he encounters one of the former child prostitutes (Lili Simmons) from the 1995 case and gets to know her much, much better.

Meeting Reggie Ledoux’s (Charles Halford) meth cooking partner leads Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) and Hart (Woody Harrelson) to the man have been hunting for months. As the pair relate the collar which would make both of their careers to Gilbough (Michael Potts) and Papania (Tory Kittles) we notice, not for the first time, that the series of events described in the interviews immediately following the events and 17 years later don’t match up with the events from the flashbacks. However, for the first time in the series we see just how far both men are willing to lie to obscure what really happened and cover their asses.

The end of “Who Goes There” marks the halfway point of the anthology’s first season and the midpoint of this storyline. It also gives Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) and Hart (Woody Harrelson) a legitimate lead on the crazed meth maker Reginald Ledoux (Charles Halford) who looks more and more like the killer the pair of detectives have been hunting for months. With no way to find Ledoux except through the biker gang who their suspect is now cooking meth for, Cohle goes undercover off-the-books renewing an old friendship that may lead him to a possible introduction. And, of course, that’s when things start going seriously wrong.

While continuing to delve into the demons both men were fighting on an investigation no one wanted them to spend so much time and resources on, “The Locked Room” develops the first solid lead in the case as Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) and Hart’s (Woody Harrelson) discovery of the burned-out church with a painting eerily similar to their murder scene leads them to a tent ministry. When the lead doesn’t pan out, it forces Cohle to redouble his efforts into finding another murder that matches the profile and a thread to follow back to their killer.

As the investigation into the bizarre ritual murder stalls the second episode as “Seeing Things” takes time to fill-in the back story of Detective Rust Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) including the tragedy of losing his young daughter and his extended stay as a Narcotics undercover officer which left him with a drug habit and occasional visions (for which the episode gets its name). We also get a closer look at Detective Hart’s (Woody Harrelson) relationships with both his wife (Michelle Monaghan) and mistress (Alexandra Daddario) as the episode showcases the pressure on Hart and Cohle to find a suspect for the murder of a local prostitute.

Created by Nic Pizzolatto, HBO’s new anthology series True Detective stars Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as a pair of former Louisiana State Police Detectives who are brought back into the fold to discuss a 1995 paganistic killing 17 years later when a case eerily similar occurs. Interviewed separately each men tell their version of events both on the case itself, their partner, and what they remember of the time surrounding the first murder which the audience witnesses in extended flashback sequences that slowly begin to fill-in the story of a murder of a prostitute found in the wounds drugged, bound, raped, and whose body was staged with symbols and a crown of antlers tied to her head.